The Odessa File

Instead, he rang the Hohenzollern Hotel in Osnabrück and caught Mackensen about to leave. In a few sentences he told the killer of the latest disaster, and where Roschmann lived.

‘It looks as if your bomb hasn’t worked,’ he told him. ‘Get down there faster than you’ve ever driven,’ he said. ‘Hide your car and stick close to Roschmann. There’s a bodyguard called Oskar as well. If Miller goes straight to the police with what he’s got, we’ve all had it. But if he comes to Roschmann, take him alive and make him talk. We must know what he’s done with those papers before he dies.’

Mackensen glanced at his road map inside the phone booth and estimated the distance.

‘I’ll be there at one o’clock,’ he said.

*

The door opened at the second ring and a gust of warm air flowed out of the hall. The man who stood in front of him had evidently come from his study, the door of which Miller could see standing open and leading off the hallway.

Years of good living had put weight on the once-lanky SS officer. His face had a flush, either from drinking or from the country air, and his hair was grey at the sides. He looked the picture of middle-aged, upper-middle-class, prosperous good health. But although different in detail, the face was the same Tauber had seen and described. He surveyed Miller without enthusiasm.

‘Yes?’ he said.

It took Miller another ten seconds before he could speak. What he had rehearsed just went out of his head.

‘My name is Miller,’ he said, ‘and yours is Eduard Roschmann.’

At the mention of both names something flickered through the eyes of the man in front of him, but iron control kept his face muscles straight.

‘This is preposterous,’ he said at length. ‘I’ve never heard of the man you are talking about.’

Behind the façade of calm the former SS officer’s mind was racing. Several times in his life since 1945 he had survived through sharp thinking in a crisis. He recognised the name of Miller well enough, and recalled his conversation with the Werwolf weeks before. His first instinct was to shut the door in Miller’s face, but he overcame it.

‘Are you alone in the house?’ asked Miller.

‘Yes,’ said Roschmann, truthfully.

‘We’ll go into your study,’ said Miller flatly.

Roschmann made no objection, for he realised he was now forced to keep Miller on the premises and stall for time, until …

He turned on his heel and strode back across the hall-way. Miller slammed the front door after him and was at Roschmann’s heels as they entered the study. It was a comfortable room, with a thick padded door which Miller closed behind him, and a log fire burning in the grate.

Roschmann stopped in the centre of the room and turned to face Miller.

‘Is your wife here?’ asked Miller. Roschmann shook his head.

‘She has gone away for the weekend to visit relatives,’ he said. This much was true. She had been called away the previous evening at a moment’s notice and had taken the second car. The first car owned by the pair was by ill chance in the garage for repairs. She was due back that evening.

What Roschmann did not mention, but what occupied his racing mind, was that his bulky, shaven-headed chauffeur/bodyguard Oskar had cycled down to the village half an hour earlier to report the telephone being out of order. He knew he had to keep Miller talking until the man returned.

When he turned to face Miller the young reporter’s right hand held an automatic pointed straight at his belly. Roschmann was frightened, but covered it with bluster.

‘You threaten me with a gun in my own house?’

‘Then call the police,’ said Miller, nodding at the telephone on the writing desk. Roschmann made no move towards it.

‘I see you still limp a little,’ remarked Miller. ‘The orthopaedic shoe almost disguises it, but not quite. The missing toes, lost in an operation in Rimini camp. The frostbite you got wandering through the fields of Austria caused that, didn’t it?’

Roschmann’s eyes narrowed slightly, but he said nothing.

‘You see, if the police come, they’ll identify you, Herr Direktor. The face is still the same, the bullet wound in the chest, the scar under the left armpit where you tried to remove the Waffen-SS blood-group tattoo, no doubt. Do you really want to call the police?’

Roschmann let out the air in his lungs in a long sigh.

‘What do you want, Miller?’